Prolog

Monika had always expressed an interest in sailing around Cape Horn, so when Holland America Line had a special on a cruise from Valparaiso, Chile, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, we finally bit the bullet and signed up. Since we couldn't seem to find flights much cheaper than the air fares HAL offered (along with their "don't miss the boat" guarantee), we booked the flights through them also. Of course, part of the reason they had such good fares on the air fares was that the 8-hour flights down to Valparaiso and back up from Buenos Aires were both overnight "red-eye" specials, but we didn't find that out until much later!

Departing on Thanksgiving Day was also a bit odd. We were worried about the crush of travellers for the Thanksgiving weekend, but it turns out that on Thursday afternoon, which was when we departed Dulles Airport, all the travellers were home eating Thanksgiving dinner with their families rather than travelling. In fact, the airport was so empty it was spooky, with absolutely NO waiting lines for luggage check-in or security screening. I didn't even have time to gracefully (??) remove my shoes and belt, which I normally do while I am shuffling along in the queue for the screening gate. I ended up shucking off my shoes and belt and turning all my pockets insde out to empty them in a frantic hurry just outside the gate. The security chief, observing all this with a jaundiced eye, said I looked like I was doing the Macarena! I'm glad he got a laugh out of it.

The flight down to Miami was uneventful and mercifully short as American Airlines did not, of course, feed us although they did still offer complimentary sodas, coffee, or tea thank goodness. In Miami we had an early dinner of hard-boiled eggs and rolls that we had brought from home, and that carried us through until we did finally get a dinner meal on the night flight from Miami to Santiago, Chile. We also, surprisingly, got about 4 hours of sleep, albeit in bits and snatches as we were sitting upright in those cramped, economy-class plane seats. But that amount of sleep plus several cups of coffee during breakfast were just enough to keep us going after we touched down the next morning at the airport just outside Santiago.